Richard Roberts's Blog, page 2
August 9, 2019
GASP WHEEZE FINISHED
You Can Be A Cyborg When You're Older is written and compiled into a manuscript.
It is beta reader time.
Also I think the first two supervillain books are back on Amazon but the editing is slow so the other three may take awhile.
Beta readers, place your requests at rrsupervillain@gmail.com, an address I forgot I even had until now.
Now to watch my brain spiral and crash.
It is beta reader time.
Also I think the first two supervillain books are back on Amazon but the editing is slow so the other three may take awhile.
Beta readers, place your requests at rrsupervillain@gmail.com, an address I forgot I even had until now.
Now to watch my brain spiral and crash.
March 31, 2019
ORDER UUUUP! Paperbacks first!
Okay, woah. This publisher releases paperbacks before ebooks! Isn't that weird? But it's a thing, which means the paperbacks for A Rag Doll's Guide To Here And There ARE OUT ALREADY. Order that bad daddy! Just click on the picture I'll post below!
And I'm begging you, leave a review!
EDIT - Oh, and the final word is 'April 16th' for the ebook release.
And I'm begging you, leave a review!
EDIT - Oh, and the final word is 'April 16th' for the ebook release.
March 24, 2019
FINALLY
Look what's up for preorder!
It has been a long and painful dry spell for me. Fighting with Curiosity Quills and then going back to being an unpublished author hurt. But now I have a book again!
Is it weird? Yeah, kinda. But it's fun and dark and adorable and I read Oz and went 'I can make a magical kids' world with WAY more childish wonder than THAT.'
Get your preorders, kids, because the full thing will be up soon. We're aiming at April 8th. If that changes, I'll keep you posted.
And Vanity Rose's book is coming along beautifully.
EDIT - THE PRINT COVER!
It has been a long and painful dry spell for me. Fighting with Curiosity Quills and then going back to being an unpublished author hurt. But now I have a book again!
Is it weird? Yeah, kinda. But it's fun and dark and adorable and I read Oz and went 'I can make a magical kids' world with WAY more childish wonder than THAT.'
Get your preorders, kids, because the full thing will be up soon. We're aiming at April 8th. If that changes, I'll keep you posted.
And Vanity Rose's book is coming along beautifully.
EDIT - THE PRINT COVER!
March 18, 2019
Alita Good, Egil Bad
I haven't seen Captain Marvel yet, and part of me was like 'Maybe I should wait', then I was like 'You dufus, you haven't posted in forever, stop lollygagging.'
So, a couple of quick reviews while I wait for preorders of A Rag Doll's Guide To Here And There to go up on Amazon.
Alita: Battle Angel, the movie. I loved it. Do you like robots? Do you like seeing three hundred year old teenage girls kick ass? Do you like seeing them kick a LOT of ass? Alita delivers these things by the truckload. It doesn't deliver much else, but it never claimed to. Not that the acting or characterizations are in any way bad, it's just unashamedly an action movie.
It did have some interesting details worth commenting on. In particular, I was struck by the nude scenes. Twice Alita wanders around naked, but there's nothing to see. Her cyborg bodies are less anatomically correct than a dress-up doll, only female in general outline. It's an interesting choice to desexualize her that way, particularly given that the comic does not shy away from fanservice. But those scenes are a different kind of fanservice, because the bodies are drop-dead gorgeous in a nonsexual sense. If you like humanoid robots as an aesthetic, the jointing and scrollwork on Alita's first body in that scene are worth it by themselves.
As a fan of the books, I strongly approve that the movie covers the first volume while clearly leaving a segue for the second. I'm not sure how I feel about the different role of Desty Nova or revealing Alita's identity early. They work, at least.
I wish she did more actual martial arts. Every time she did, I wanted to leap out of my seat cheering.
Okay, the other thing.
I like going back and reading old stuff, source material, that kind of thing.
I read Egil's Saga, one of the major Icelandic viking sagas. Very important. Very influential. Semi-historical.
I do not recommend it.
Man, where to even begin? It's not awful. The first 25% is tedious, because there's a huge build up section where you're walked through the preceding two or three generations of Egil's ancestors, and how they really don't get along with Harald, the King of Norway.
Then Egil is born, and Egil... is the damnedest story hero I have ever read. Egil is an awful person. Egil's hobby is murder. Not killing people in battle, although he sure does plenty of that and is good at it. At the age of seven, Egil loses a ball game and gets beaten up, goes and gets a halberd, and chops the bigger kid's head in half. This is a pattern for the rest of his life, where if Egil doesn't get what he wants, Egil murders (illegally) the person who refused him, and a varying amount of bystanders. Lose a law suit? Kill people. Lose another law suit? Kill people. Given bad beer Kill people. Steal from some folks? Not good enough without going back and killing people.
The biggest argument for reading Egil's Saga is if you like watching a train wreck unfold. Egil is terrible from beginning to end, so much so that it was my major source of entertainment reading.
The saga is also a gigantic advertisement for Iceland. Norway sucks, Iceland is wonderful, that's the consistent message. Everybody should move from Norway to Iceland and get rich. Long, elaborate descriptions of places to fish, hunt whales, gather eggs, gather berries, on and on and on, and free land! And no horrible King of Norway!
No discussion of any Viking literature is complete without checking how it treats women. Man, Viking literature is all OVER the place on that. It's like everything I read comes from a different culture, which might well be true. Whoever wrote the Saga of Egil liked women even less than Saxo Grammaticus. Women are objects in Egil's Saga. They are treated pretty much like boats, mentioned mostly when one is especially beautiful and traded between men. Only two women get speaking roles. One is a random earl's daughter whose role in the story is to be the girl Egil loses his virginity with. Her speaking part consists of objecting to being paired up with a 13 year old boy at a wild party, then being really impressed by how many people he's murdered.
The second woman with a speaking role is Gunnhildr, known in other sagas as the Mother of Queens. She is played as the villain in this book, over and over trying to convince her husband (Or more accurately 'owner', since she's a captive, not a wife) King Eric to kill Egil. This struck me as hilarious, because Egil is so awful a person. She's obviously, 100% right. He is trouble on the hoof and is going to keep on murdering people until he's gotten rid of. The saga players her as the villain, but in a real sense she's the heroine and the smartest person around.
Okay, I'm done now.
So, a couple of quick reviews while I wait for preorders of A Rag Doll's Guide To Here And There to go up on Amazon.
Alita: Battle Angel, the movie. I loved it. Do you like robots? Do you like seeing three hundred year old teenage girls kick ass? Do you like seeing them kick a LOT of ass? Alita delivers these things by the truckload. It doesn't deliver much else, but it never claimed to. Not that the acting or characterizations are in any way bad, it's just unashamedly an action movie.
It did have some interesting details worth commenting on. In particular, I was struck by the nude scenes. Twice Alita wanders around naked, but there's nothing to see. Her cyborg bodies are less anatomically correct than a dress-up doll, only female in general outline. It's an interesting choice to desexualize her that way, particularly given that the comic does not shy away from fanservice. But those scenes are a different kind of fanservice, because the bodies are drop-dead gorgeous in a nonsexual sense. If you like humanoid robots as an aesthetic, the jointing and scrollwork on Alita's first body in that scene are worth it by themselves.
As a fan of the books, I strongly approve that the movie covers the first volume while clearly leaving a segue for the second. I'm not sure how I feel about the different role of Desty Nova or revealing Alita's identity early. They work, at least.
I wish she did more actual martial arts. Every time she did, I wanted to leap out of my seat cheering.
Okay, the other thing.
I like going back and reading old stuff, source material, that kind of thing.
I read Egil's Saga, one of the major Icelandic viking sagas. Very important. Very influential. Semi-historical.
I do not recommend it.
Man, where to even begin? It's not awful. The first 25% is tedious, because there's a huge build up section where you're walked through the preceding two or three generations of Egil's ancestors, and how they really don't get along with Harald, the King of Norway.
Then Egil is born, and Egil... is the damnedest story hero I have ever read. Egil is an awful person. Egil's hobby is murder. Not killing people in battle, although he sure does plenty of that and is good at it. At the age of seven, Egil loses a ball game and gets beaten up, goes and gets a halberd, and chops the bigger kid's head in half. This is a pattern for the rest of his life, where if Egil doesn't get what he wants, Egil murders (illegally) the person who refused him, and a varying amount of bystanders. Lose a law suit? Kill people. Lose another law suit? Kill people. Given bad beer Kill people. Steal from some folks? Not good enough without going back and killing people.
The biggest argument for reading Egil's Saga is if you like watching a train wreck unfold. Egil is terrible from beginning to end, so much so that it was my major source of entertainment reading.
The saga is also a gigantic advertisement for Iceland. Norway sucks, Iceland is wonderful, that's the consistent message. Everybody should move from Norway to Iceland and get rich. Long, elaborate descriptions of places to fish, hunt whales, gather eggs, gather berries, on and on and on, and free land! And no horrible King of Norway!
No discussion of any Viking literature is complete without checking how it treats women. Man, Viking literature is all OVER the place on that. It's like everything I read comes from a different culture, which might well be true. Whoever wrote the Saga of Egil liked women even less than Saxo Grammaticus. Women are objects in Egil's Saga. They are treated pretty much like boats, mentioned mostly when one is especially beautiful and traded between men. Only two women get speaking roles. One is a random earl's daughter whose role in the story is to be the girl Egil loses his virginity with. Her speaking part consists of objecting to being paired up with a 13 year old boy at a wild party, then being really impressed by how many people he's murdered.
The second woman with a speaking role is Gunnhildr, known in other sagas as the Mother of Queens. She is played as the villain in this book, over and over trying to convince her husband (Or more accurately 'owner', since she's a captive, not a wife) King Eric to kill Egil. This struck me as hilarious, because Egil is so awful a person. She's obviously, 100% right. He is trouble on the hoof and is going to keep on murdering people until he's gotten rid of. The saga players her as the villain, but in a real sense she's the heroine and the smartest person around.
Okay, I'm done now.
February 18, 2019
A Huge Question
I got my book rights back! My plan is to first begin shopping Supervillain to agents in the hopes of getting them into bookstores with a major publisher.
But it raises a major question. This Vanity Rose book is pretty early on. I could scrap it and recycle some of Vanity's personality into a new Supervillain world book. I only started her book because I felt like I needed a replacement property.
Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
But it raises a major question. This Vanity Rose book is pretty early on. I could scrap it and recycle some of Vanity's personality into a new Supervillain world book. I only started her book because I felt like I needed a replacement property.
Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
January 23, 2019
Still In Limbo
I'm... well, it would be unprofessional to say exactly what's going on, but my publisher hasn't given me my rights back. I want to try and get the Supervillain books a new publisher as fast as possible, definitely. I'm not 100% sure who would want to pick up a book series that had a previous publisher, but on the other hand it's a proven seller.
While I fight with that, do you guys want chapter four? It needs a lot of clean-up, but if I don't post while I'm thinking about it, I never post.
While I fight with that, do you guys want chapter four? It needs a lot of clean-up, but if I don't post while I'm thinking about it, I never post.
December 29, 2018
December 18, 2018
End Of An Era
Subtitled: I Hope You Downloaded In Time
My books have all been taken off Amazon. I'll leave this as the top post for at least a day or two, since people need to see it. This is part of my canceling my contracts with Curiosity Quills for not paying me royalties owed. When the official releases arrive, I will begin seeking new representation for my books. So far, no luck on the Rag Doll book, but it's so exotic I figured it would be a hard sell.
My books have all been taken off Amazon. I'll leave this as the top post for at least a day or two, since people need to see it. This is part of my canceling my contracts with Curiosity Quills for not paying me royalties owed. When the official releases arrive, I will begin seeking new representation for my books. So far, no luck on the Rag Doll book, but it's so exotic I figured it would be a hard sell.
December 1, 2018
Three Strange Serieses I Like
I have been introduced to a new genre that I am seriously digging. Mostly, I dig them because they're weird and each one unique and require a lot of thought. They are not conventional entertainment. But hey, maybe my fans don't want conventional entertainment! So I will share them with you.
The genre are stories told by YouTube animated videos. Usually they're shorts a few minutes long, but some serieses have much longer episodes. The format allows for a freedom of creation you can't get in television shows, and effects you can't get in books. The animation is inevitably basic, and instead the creators focus on exploiting the potential of those basic formats. So, the three I've gotten into so far...
Ratboy Genius. This is a series of heavily music focused videos in the 3-5 minute range by 'Ratboy Genius.' Ratboy Genius is not a visual artist. His 3D art skills improve as the show goes on, but he's going for a weird 'children's scribble' flavor anyway. It's all one story, but presented in miniserieses that follow different main characters and subplots. It's all pretty surreal. I started with the Little King John miniseries, and I love that arrogant mostly beneficent god-creator of his own little Minecraft world.
The big thing with Ratboy Genius is the music. I don't have enough of a background to describe why it is good, but the creator is, well, a genius at electronically produced music. If you're inclined to that, throw yourself at Ratboy Genius immediately.
Petscop. This is a fake game Let's Play, telling a story by having a YouTuber play a supposedly rare, forgotten Playstation game and recording it for some unknown friend. There is no actual Petscop game, and the most brilliant part of the series is how flawlessly it looks like he's recording a game, instead of animating videos. It's meant to be creepy (I don't creep out, so I don't know if it is) and a puzzle for the audience to figure out. So much so that there are whole (dysfunctional, of course) online communities dedicated to doing so, and meta commentary on how the YouTube page is structured and possibly outside websites. There are YouTube serieses just about analyzing Petscop.
Important: Petscop has obvious symbolic themes of child abuse, and contains references to real life cases of fatal child abuse, if you put together the pieces. It's all presented that way rather than blatant actions, but knowing that theme can help decide if a viewer will love it or hate it.
It is much slower than the other two shows I'm discussing today. Episode length is mostly 10-30 minutes. Unlike the other two, Petscop is ongoing, but releases at a tremendously slow rate, sometimes months between episodes.
Finally, Kuroi_Channel! Man, what a head trip this series is. 27 episodes, most less than two minutes. Are you aware of the 'virtual YouTuber' phenomenon, where voice and sometimes video sync animation programs substitute a cartoon/anime character for the YouTuber? Well, this is about one of those. Or three of those. Except they're not substituting for anybody, they're nearly incoherent artificial beings who've had their third dimension destroyed in a war and are trying to learn 3D modeling to get it back.
I... think. Kuroi_Channel is nonstop glitch aesthetics, one of the purest and most brilliantly evolving portrayals of that aesthetic ever. If you particularly liked Portal because of how obviously broken GlaDoS was, Kuroi will be the thing for you.
Unlike the other two, Kuroi_Channel does not have a big fanbase. It is tiny and relatively unknown. If I can point a few people towards that freaky armless glitch cat and her two sisters Homebody and Thumbnail Witch, I'll have done a good deed.
That's it for today! I'm trying to get back to using this blog, because what stopped me was mostly stressing over my publisher. Maybe in the next day or two I'll review She Ra.
The genre are stories told by YouTube animated videos. Usually they're shorts a few minutes long, but some serieses have much longer episodes. The format allows for a freedom of creation you can't get in television shows, and effects you can't get in books. The animation is inevitably basic, and instead the creators focus on exploiting the potential of those basic formats. So, the three I've gotten into so far...
Ratboy Genius. This is a series of heavily music focused videos in the 3-5 minute range by 'Ratboy Genius.' Ratboy Genius is not a visual artist. His 3D art skills improve as the show goes on, but he's going for a weird 'children's scribble' flavor anyway. It's all one story, but presented in miniserieses that follow different main characters and subplots. It's all pretty surreal. I started with the Little King John miniseries, and I love that arrogant mostly beneficent god-creator of his own little Minecraft world.
The big thing with Ratboy Genius is the music. I don't have enough of a background to describe why it is good, but the creator is, well, a genius at electronically produced music. If you're inclined to that, throw yourself at Ratboy Genius immediately.
Petscop. This is a fake game Let's Play, telling a story by having a YouTuber play a supposedly rare, forgotten Playstation game and recording it for some unknown friend. There is no actual Petscop game, and the most brilliant part of the series is how flawlessly it looks like he's recording a game, instead of animating videos. It's meant to be creepy (I don't creep out, so I don't know if it is) and a puzzle for the audience to figure out. So much so that there are whole (dysfunctional, of course) online communities dedicated to doing so, and meta commentary on how the YouTube page is structured and possibly outside websites. There are YouTube serieses just about analyzing Petscop.
Important: Petscop has obvious symbolic themes of child abuse, and contains references to real life cases of fatal child abuse, if you put together the pieces. It's all presented that way rather than blatant actions, but knowing that theme can help decide if a viewer will love it or hate it.
It is much slower than the other two shows I'm discussing today. Episode length is mostly 10-30 minutes. Unlike the other two, Petscop is ongoing, but releases at a tremendously slow rate, sometimes months between episodes.
Finally, Kuroi_Channel! Man, what a head trip this series is. 27 episodes, most less than two minutes. Are you aware of the 'virtual YouTuber' phenomenon, where voice and sometimes video sync animation programs substitute a cartoon/anime character for the YouTuber? Well, this is about one of those. Or three of those. Except they're not substituting for anybody, they're nearly incoherent artificial beings who've had their third dimension destroyed in a war and are trying to learn 3D modeling to get it back.
I... think. Kuroi_Channel is nonstop glitch aesthetics, one of the purest and most brilliantly evolving portrayals of that aesthetic ever. If you particularly liked Portal because of how obviously broken GlaDoS was, Kuroi will be the thing for you.
Unlike the other two, Kuroi_Channel does not have a big fanbase. It is tiny and relatively unknown. If I can point a few people towards that freaky armless glitch cat and her two sisters Homebody and Thumbnail Witch, I'll have done a good deed.
That's it for today! I'm trying to get back to using this blog, because what stopped me was mostly stressing over my publisher. Maybe in the next day or two I'll review She Ra.
November 17, 2018
The Real Sample
Okay, folks. Here is the test. I have written what I intend to be the first chapter of the currently untitled new cyberpunk book. A dropbox link to a pdf is the best I can give you. If anyone wants to read it, I would appreciate knowing if I have a Property, something that people will want to read if I write a full book or books.
Serenity Rose, Chapter One
Serenity Rose, Chapter One
